Carmen is hugged by Pamela as she is told by the doctor that the artificial insemination was successful and that she is pregnant. Her husband, Bob is at right and her good friend, Marian Johnson is behind. Bob and Carmen Pack lost their two children when an allegedly drunk driver hit them on a sidewalk near their Danville home. With the help of Carmen's niece, Pamela Chirinos who came from Peru and donated her eggs, Carmen has become pregnant with twins through artificial insemination.
Deanne Fitzmaurice / The Chronicle less

Carmen is hugged by Pamela as she is told by the doctor that the artificial insemination was successful and that she is pregnant. Her husband, Bob is at right and her good friend, Marian Johnson is behind. Bob ... more

Photo: Deanne Fitzmaurice

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The children's room still has alot of pictures, memorabilia. Bob and Carmen Pack lost their two children when an allegedly drunk driver hit them on a sidewalk near their Danville home. With the help of Carmen's niece who came from Peru and donated her eggs, Carmen has become pregnant with twins through artificial insemination.
Deanne Fitzmaurice / The Chronicle less

The children's room still has alot of pictures, memorabilia. Bob and Carmen Pack lost their two children when an allegedly drunk driver hit them on a sidewalk near their Danville home. With the help of Carmen's ... more

Photo: Deanne Fitzmaurice

Image 3 of 4

Carmen gives a kiss to Pamela before her niece's procedure to have her eggs extracted at Reproductive Science Center in Danville. Bob and Carmen Pack lost their two children when an allegedly drunk driver hit them on a sidewalk near their Danville home. With the help of Carmen's niece who came from Peru and donated her eggs, Carmen has become pregnant with twins through artificial insemination.
Deanne Fitzmaurice / The Chronicle less

Carmen gives a kiss to Pamela before her niece's procedure to have her eggs extracted at Reproductive Science Center in Danville. Bob and Carmen Pack lost their two children when an allegedly drunk driver hit ... more

Photo: Deanne Fitzmaurice

Image 4 of 4

DANVILLE / Reliving the tragedy, relying on future

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The gold Mercedes was barreling toward them, and there was nothing anyone could do.

Carmen Pack saw headlights, then heard a crash. Her son's scooter flew through the air. Shattered pieces of her daughter's bike lay scattered along the busy Danville street.

Instantly, Alana Pack was dead. She was 7 years old. Her 10-year-old brother Troy would die a few hours later.

Even now, more than a year later, the memory of that fateful October evening haunts Carmen Pack and her husband, Bob. And it haunts Jimena Barreto, the nanny accused of drunkenly running down the two children at the center of the Packs' lives. The grief has been so consuming that each of them has contemplated suicide.

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They will all face their grief again Monday, when Barreto's second-degree murder trial begins in Martinez. The 46-year-old nanny, who has a history of drunken driving, faces 15 years to life in prison for murder, fleeing the scene of a crime and several other charges.

Most days, when thoughts of the tragedy intrude, Bob and Carmen Pack find something, anything, to distract them from the pain.

And there have been many distractions, like their unwavering lobbying for tougher DUI laws and the barrage of reporters chronicling their extraordinary efforts to start a new family through in-vitro fertilization.

When that doesn't work, they simply find comfort knowing Carmen Pack is three months' pregnant with twins.

"I'm constantly fighting with myself to not get into that deep, deep grieving," said Carmen Pack, 44, whose doctor is so worried about how she will handle the stress of the trial that he wants paramedics at her side.

"It all comes back again at night time though," she said. "At night, I cry quietly. Sometimes (Bob) doesn't even know I'm crying."

During those dark hours, the pain sneaks in and she allows herself to recall bits and pieces of Oct. 26, 2003.

It was one of those lingering, Indian summer evenings. The kids had spent the day at a neighborhood Halloween party. Alana, a feisty tomboy nicknamed "brown squirrel" because she was always running around, went as a witch. Troy, a chubby Oakland A's fan with a sensitive personality, wore his Chicago Bears football uniform.

Their two best friends tagged along as Carmen Pack took the kids to the neighborhood convenience store for Slurpees. It was a stroll they had taken countless times before.

"The kids were tired," Bob Pack said recently in his home, which remains covered in photos and mementos of the children. "I wish I would have just put them in the car and drove them."

Moments before the crash, Troy turned to his mother and asked whether he and his friend could ride ahead on their scooters to get away from the girls. Carmen Pack said no, and still wonders why.

"If I said yes, maybe things would be different," she said. "At the time, I thought the safest thing would be to all stay together."

Media everywhere

The high-profile case in the wealthy, usually quiet East Bay town and the couple's efforts to start another family has attracted international media coverage. The trial also is expected to draw widespread publicity, and lawyers have expressed concern that the attention may make it difficult to find impartial jurors.

The case is unusual because it marks the first time Contra Costa County prosecutors have charged someone accused of driving under the influence with murder without having a blood or urine test to prove the suspect was intoxicated at the time of the alleged crime.

Prosecutors said the evidence will show Barreto was drunk and high on painkillers and muscle relaxants when she killed Troy and Alana.

"It's all very circumstantial," Senior Deputy District Attorney Paul Sequeira admits. "But when you put it all together, it's like the old saying: It looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck."

Barreto fled after the accident and made a run for Southern California before returning two days later to San Jose, where police caught her near a San Jose beer brewery.

During an interview earlier this year in the Martinez jail where she has been held without bail since her arrest, Barreto said she drank no alcohol and took no illicit drugs the day of the crash. She refused to discuss allegations that she abused prescription drugs, including the painkiller Vicodin.

Barreto said she fled in a state of shock and insists she planned to turn herself in. She said she remains haunted by the death of Troy and Alana, which has left her depressed and pondering killing herself. Her trial has been postponed three times, most recently because a mental breakdown left her too emotionally distraught to testify.

"There's not a day that I don't think about this terrible thing that happened," she said.

Her attorney, Craig Wormley of Beverly Hills, concedes his client has not been a sympathetic character. He doesn't believe, though, that the murder charge is justified, and plans to show that the prosecution cannot prove she was intoxicated when the crash occurred. He also hopes Barreto, who did not appear before the grand jury, will take the stand.

"Let's face it. She didn't come off too remorseful at the beginning," Wormley said. "Hopefully, by putting her on the stand, we can show otherwise."

Chaotic scene

In the months since the crash, the Packs have forgotten some of the details of their children's deaths. But grand jury transcripts reveal a chaotic scene where as many as 400 people scrambled to save the brother and sister.

Minutes before Barreto's car jumped the curb on Camino Tassajara at about 40 mph, other drivers swerved to avoid her erratic driving, witnesses testified.

The car slammed into the children, sending Troy flying 40 feet. Carmen Pack screamed so loud that neighbors, some in their pajamas, rushed to see what happened.

It was already too late for Alana. Troy was barely alive, with only a fleeting pulse. Carmen Pack had torn ligaments in her knee, but she didn't feel the pain. She cradled her daughter, searching for signs of life in her eyes. Through her screams for help, she blurted out her phone number. Someone called it.

Bob Pack was in his recliner watching television, too tired to answer the phone. But when he heard his wife's screams on the answering machine, he raced out in his socks and sped off in the car without even shutting the garage door.

But there was nothing he could do.

"I knew it was real bad, but I just didn't accept it," Bob Pack, 47, said. "I believed they were both going to be OK, that someone was going to revive them."

For weeks afterward, Bob Pack would wake in the night and pad silently down the hall to his children's bedrooms to look inside, hoping it had all been a bad dream.

Acceptance has not come easily, and even today their spacious two-story home seems empty, even though it is filled with memorials to the children. They smile from paintings that dominate the entryway, and photos and tributes fill every room, even the guest bathroom.

In Alana's yellow bedroom, her soccer trophies, the chalkboard on which she practiced her multiplication, even her dresser drawer filled with neatly folded socks and underwear, remain exactly as they were on the last day of her life.

Troy's room has been rearranged, to accommodate Carmen Pack's 20-year-old niece, Pamela Perales Chirinos, who came from Peru to donate her eggs so that her aunt might have children. But his toys and video games fill his closet.

When it's too much to face, the couple simply close the bedroom door. But there's no escaping the quiet that looms when they are alone.

In that silence, they have discussed a topic that, even now, is difficult for the devoutly Catholic couple to admit.

"I know suicide is not the way to get to heaven," Bob Pack said. "But (I thought) maybe that was a way to see them again. The pain I think I could take, but I miss my kids."

Every time they leave their home, though, they must drive past the crash site.

Today, it is a peaceful shrine, marked by stuffed animals and candles left by friends and classmates.

9 license suspensions

What no one knew on the day Troy and Alana died was that Barreto, a native of Colombia and nanny for wealthy families, had at least three previous DUI arrests and her license had been suspended at least nine times.

Her neighbors told the grand jury they rarely saw her without a drink, her favorites being the malt liquor Smirnoff Ice or wine. She spiraled into drug and alcohol abuse, they testified, after her husband left, and they saw her with a drink in her hand as she lounged by the pool the day of the accident.

Barreto's hair was disheveled when she got out of her gold Mercedes after striking the children, witnesses testified. She seemed to have trouble walking and mentioned taking pain medication for her back.

Sensing Barreto might leave, Carmen Pack hobbled over to the Mercedes and snatched her keys.

Barreto told police she stuck around for 10 minutes, then caught rides with strangers and cabs to Walnut Creek. She spent the night in San Francisco, then hopped on a bus headed to Ojai, in Ventura County, where her estranged husband lived.

She called her apartment manager repeatedly. Once, the manager testified, Barreto begged her to retrieve a stash of cocaine from her kitchen and flush it down the toilet and collect $2,000 in cash hidden in her apartment.

She got off the bus in Coalinga to get something to eat and the bus left without her. She returned to San Jose with a stranger and spent the night in a hotel. Police arrested her the next day after tracing a phone call she made from a brewery.

Barreto insisted that she hadn't been drinking the day of the crash. But police said she admitted to taking at least 10 painkillers and muscle relaxants.

From jail, Barreto says that in her prayers, she asks the Packs for their forgiveness.

"I don't want to live," she said. "What would I want to live for? My life is going to be like this forever."

It's too difficult for Bob and Carmen Pack to think about forgiveness for someone they often refer to only as "the nanny" or "the woman."

Carmen Pack says she wanted only to be a mother, and aches to hold a child again.

"My only two kids are gone, and I can't live my life without being a mom again," she said. "What else am I going to do?"

She and her husband began trying to conceive a little more than a month after Troy and Alana's deaths, but were unsuccessful. Chirinos, who lives in Peru and bears a striking resemblance to Carmen Pack, offered her own eggs. The U.S. Embassy in her homeland initially denied Chirinos a visa, saying she would not return when it expired, and she was only allowed to come when a U.S. representative intervened.

The couple learned in February that Carmen Pack is carrying twins. They've started converting a spare room into a nursery, and they're thinking of names.

If it's a girl, her middle name will be Alana. If it's a boy, his middle name will be Troy.